A California man who had traveled to Chicago but was allegedly to scared by the Covid-19 pandemic to fly home, lived inside O’Hare International airport for three months without anyone noticing.
It’s unclear why Aditya Singh, a 36-year-old unemployed man traveled to Chicago in the first place, but authorities say he managed to hide in a secured area of O’Hare International Airport for three months, before he was arrested, this weekend. Singh had been living in the airport since mid October, and would have probably been there for a lot longer, had he not been approached by airport staff on Saturday and asked to produce some identification.
Singh reportedly lowered his face mask and showed the two United Airlines employees an ID badge that he was wearing around his neck. Only the badge belonged to an operations manager who had reported it missing on October 26, a week after Singh’s airplane landed at O’Hare. The police were called, and the suspicious man was taken into custody.
Photo: Kirk Lai/Unsplash
During questioning, the 36-year-old California man said he landed at O’Hare on October 19, but was too afraid of Covid-19 to fly back home, so he decided to stay in the airport instead. The unemployed man added that he survived on food that passengers at the airport gave him, and never had any problems until the two United Airlines employees approached him. It it unclear what brought Singh to Chicago in the first place.
Aditya Singh, who has no criminal background, was charged with felony criminal trespass to a restricted area of an airport and misdemeanor theft. On Sunday, Singh was brought in front of a judge, who seemed shocked after hearing the allegations against him.
“So if I understand you correctly, you’re telling me that an unauthorized, nonemployee individual was allegedly living within a secure part of the O’Hare airport terminal from Oct. 19, 2020, to Jan. 16, 2021, and was not detected? I want to understand you correctly,” Cook County Judge Susana Ortiz said.
“The court finds these facts and circumstances quite shocking for the alleged period of time that this occurred,” Ortiz added. “Being in a secured part of the airport under a fake ID badge allegedly, based upon the need for airports to be absolutely secure so that people feel safe to travel, I do find those alleged actions do make him a danger to the community.”
Bail was set at $1,000, but at the time of this writing Singh was still in police custody.
